We present you with 22 BRILLIANT Money Saving Ideas to Help Boost Your Profit by Saving On Costs, Driving Productivity and Prioritising the Bigger Business Picture...

1. Achieve “Free Advertising” via Your Christmas Gifts.

Here’s a novel idea. Most businesses tend to give a gift of some sort to their staff at Christmas. For a really effective, insightful use of company branding, this year why not also include a Company corporate branded umbrella. Also keep an extra stock of them in-house for give-aways to visitors & clients. It’s the right time of year after all! For a relatively tiny investment, you not only achieve a thoughtful, memorable corporate gift, but you also benefit from a group of people actually advertising your company for free on your behalf! (So much cheaper than a sandwich board!) Also consider holding a stock of company branded corporate gifts, pens, notebooks, key-rings, mugs & so on as give-aways. Everyone likes receiving a gift and even something as basic as a branded pen is a useful & thoughtful gesture and acts as a consistent advertisement for, and reminder of, your business!

2. Increase Employee Recognition

Recognition is one of a business’s cheapest, most effective, and yet least utilised available strategies. Ensure hard work, results and excellent attendance is celebrated and rewarded, not just because it is well deserved, but because it has an untold effect on perpetuating, insuring and encouraging that level of behaviour on a wide-scale basis across the busiiness. You’d be amazed at what a difference a pat on the back, a certificate of recognition or a well-timed weekly bottle of wine can do to drive performance, increase staff loyalty and add to job satisfaction. What's more, this is an incredibly cheap strategy to employ. Also see our article “Too Many Staff Pulling Sickies?” for additional tips on encouraging high attendance levels.

3. Introduce a “Buddy System” to Increase & Expedite the Output of New Recruits.

Very few employers introduce a system where knowledge & expertise is passed on effectively. Select the most productive candidates from your workforce and “buddy” them up with new recruits to ensure best practice is passed on effectively. For a really effective outcome reward the buddy with an incentive payment upon the trainee reaching a pre-determined goal, target or skill level by a fixed date – for example after 3 months’ time.

4. Low Cost Advertising via Vehicle Signage.

There are some incredibly cost effective vehicle signage options out there nowadays, many of which are temporary/peel off signs therefore do not compromise selling the vehicle on at a later date. Companies who provide company cars are missing a trick by not utilising this pre-paid expenditure as an advertising mechanism. For professions where brazen sign-writing is too OTT, at the very least, consider having a subtle Company logo, strapline or endorsement branded on the vehicle. Brand building via familiarity in this way has much the same effect as TV advertising in that people become familiar with the brand, therefore inspiring trust, familiarity & confidence.

5. Hold an Office Purchasing Review.

Shop around for savings on all your day to day business purchases. Did you know over 30% of office purchasing expenditure is spent on consumer consumables? Ensure you are getting value for money on Printer Cartridges and day to day stationery. If you haven’t got the time to do it, then incentivise staff to find the savings for you. Many support or admin staff would be eager as a point of pride to continually secure the best deal on behalf of their company. Consider offering an award, recognition or prize to the person who saves the company the most money.

Many businesses are embarrassed to haggle with suppliers or assume the quoted rate is unmovable. There is often room for manoeuvre on the rate quoted for most services and the promise of ongoing business for a reduced rate will normally result in some movement on the rate in question. Don’t: Start the dialogue with “I don’t suppose you can offer a lower rate!..” . Do: Explain that you have been shopping around and have had other attractive offers, but would like to stay with them if they can be a little more flexible on the rate. Ask them to go away & see what they can do for you, in case the rate needs to be authorised by a higher authority.

7. Hire Smart, but Less Experienced People & Develop Them In-House.

Experience is valuable but raw enthusiasm can also give you a loyal, eager workforce who will be trying hard to impress, in order to make up for their lack of experience. Consider sourcing new graduates who will bring a certain level of intelligence to the role, but are usually available at a lesser cost, by nature of being new to the marketplace.

8. Consider Hiring Part-Time Workers

There are some very experienced, capable Mums & Dads on the market who, due to parental constraints & demands can only make themselves available for restricted hours and therefore may apply for a less senior role than they are capable of. The outcome is often that you inherit a vast amount of experience at substantially lower rates,. (Be sure not to pay part-timers less pro-rata than full timers of course!) The restricted hours of a part-timer often forces superior organisational skills. Condensing tasks in a focused manner often fine-tunes and magnifies the efforts that goes into their limited work time. As the saying goes, sometimes the busier you are, the more you get done!

9. Go Green & Save Money on Electricity bills.

Turn off electricity where possible and turn off your PC at night – Consider placing equipment on a power strip and turning it off when not in use. Ensure your printer hibernates automatically at the end of each day and ensure staff shut down their PCs at night. Incredibly this can actually extend the life of your PCs by as much as 90%.

10. Print Two- Sided Where Practical To Reduce Wasted Paper.

No explanation required! It’s greener and uses less paper, so saves you money!

11. Start a Suggestions Box

Employers often underestimate the large resource of imagination, skill and insight held by their existing employees. Failure to rise through the ranks does not preclude the fact that some staff in lower grade jobs could actually run rings around their managers given the chance in their understanding and clarity of the business's processes. Utilise this dormant resource with the introduction of a suggestions box but critically with the pre-set theme of "Saving the company money" or "Improving processes." (Otherwise you may get nothing but the request for an extra microwave, more parking and an on-site crèche scheme!) Offer a prize or award for any suggestions that are implemented and do not forget to publicly recognise and assign credit to the individuals responsible for progress. (Failure to do so is extremely inadvisable and will create unnecessary bitterness and resentment.)

12. Review & Troubleshoot Internal Processes

It is amazing how many tasks get unnecessarily repeated by several different people, particularly in larger organisations. Take a few days to really observe and objectively assess precisely what tasks go on in each unit or via each employee and whether they are effectively & completely utilised to best advantage. Alternatively if you do not have time, get a professional to do it for you – You will almost always be able to improve processes, reduce wasted time and save money.

13. Incentivise Your Staff to Help the Business Achieve its Goals.

Developing and rewarding your people can pay dividends. Consider setting a goal of 20% increase in overall annual output for a reward of 5% extra annual bonus for example. The maths speaks for itself and yet businesses are often loathed to invest in, or reward, their people in such a way. Alternatively, introduce a company annual award or annual bonus based on pre-set quantifiable criteria. This works best when rewarding the individual more than the collective effort as the hardest working individual cannot usually dictate the success or failure of the overall picture and will be more personally motivated by concentrating on their singular result.

For more quantifiable roles, consider incentivising staff more regularly and at fixed points for quarterly and monthly achievements. Consider offering a weekly incentive with an early finish on a Friday. It will usually be extremely popular and as Friday late pm is often the least productive part of the week, with staff simply wishing the last half hour of the day away anyway, it is of limited loss in exchange for an increased effort & outcome throughout the rest of the week. As a bonus to you, by nature of a set of people walking out early, it automatically highlights success and subtly creates accountability for the failure of those left behind.

14. Keep Meetings to a Strict Timeline.

Meetings, meetings and more meetings! The bane of almost every large corporate organisation. Do you really need as many as you think you do and are they productive in producing the required outcome. Are your staff in fact just looking at you blankly, half asleep, planning their dinner, or worse still, wishing you were dead! A short, punchy themed and constrictive morning meeting is an excellent way to start the day and get people’s minds awake, but for the sake of your staff and your budgets, keep them short, plan content carefully and keep them to a strict time-frame.

15. A TV Advert for a Fraction of the Cost!

YouTube attracts millions of new users every month. Videos can be made at a fraction of the cost they used to and have the propensity to go viral if they are entertaining and topical enough. This not only gives you great advertising for peanuts but, unlike TV adverts, you can even directly measure the impact of your video advert via the numbers of “views” and “likes” you receive on your videos on You Tube.

More people are now turning to the internet to find the product or service they are looking for. As such if you want your website to be found search engine optimisation becomes imperative. If you do already spend a budget on Pay per click advertising, it would be crazy not to divert part of it to improve SEO. See our article on DIY Search Engine Optimisation and/or consider investing in good SEO services to make sure your website appears on the top pages of search engines naturally.

17. Outsource!

If you are at the point where growth dictates that you are considering hiring a dedicated in-house Web expert, PR person, HR function, Head of Finance, Engineer, Legal expert, even Sales or Telesales Person then consider for a moment the advantages and cost saving potential of outsourcing on a freelance or contractual basis via a specialist company or individual freelancer. You effectively open the marketplace to a wealth of choice of expertise, rather than putting your eggs in one basket. There is no National Insurance to pay, you are not committed to the function long-term and you get to chop & change from the available marketplace until you are happy. A lot of businesses already outsource their call centres & HR department to save on additional cost and find this an extremely effective route. In addition, the role may not quite justify a full time addition, so hours and resource can be gradually increased as appropriate. On top of everything else you have the advantage of hiring a person or company who will want to exceed your expectations and assure satisfaction in order to retain your custom! If you are thinking of hiring a sales or telesales person, many businesses benefit from initially outsourcing professional Telesales company to have a yardstick by which to measure the likely success of a sales team. Bizfinders Professional Telemarketing Services offer low cost short run telemarketing trials in conjunction with The Business Support Initiative to enable you to see exactly what level of results you can expect from telemarketing when executed at its very best.

18. Get free or open-source software

Software can be expensive. If you are a start-up and complex software is unnecessary, look for alternative open-source software that might be cheap or free to download from the internet.

19. Reduce Expenses

Travelling and accommodation expenses can cost significant amount of money to organisations every year. Look for deals and supersavers and always try and book in advance. Search for offer codes and deals rather than just deferring to your standard choice. Keep an eye on our Offers page for deals available.

20. Save on Telephone Calls

Review whether you are on the most cost-effective telecoms option. Also consider using Skype or VoIP to make international calls. Check out our articles on whether you are dialling away your company bank balance and More on Voip to start you on the right track.

21. Check if Your Business Qualifies for Government Grants or Funding!

From business broadband funding through to Research & Development Grants, Business Finance Funding and Apprenticeship Schemes, there are a multitude of funding schemes & grants available via the Government- See our Funding & Grants page for all those that apply to businesses based in the South East.

22. Empower your Business with Advanced Skills!

You may be surprised to learn how many business experts & industry leading Gurus run Master Classes & Seminars to give smaller businesses the opportunity to learn business secrets that have often taken an entire career to accumulate. For just a few hundred pounds for example, you can access the Sales Secrets of an Industry Leading Sales & Marketing Guru on a One Day Sales Master Class, sponsored by The Business Support Initiative. Find out when & where the next course is here.